by Rufus King
Lieutenant Valcour stared thoughtfully down at Hollander’s pale face.
“What did you do with Endicott’s hat?” he said.
Hollander opened his eyes again in bewilderment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “And who are you, anyhow?”
“I’m Lieutenant Valcour, Mr. Hollander. We’ve talked together over the telephone. The hat I’m referring to is the one that Endicott must have been wearing, or carrying in his hand, or that was some place near him when you attacked him shortly after seven this evening.”
“I didn’t attack him, Lieutenant.” Hollander’s lips were peaked-looking and didn’t move very much when he talked. “I wasn’t in this house until a little after one-thirty this morning—after you had called me up.”
“Which did you think Mrs. Endicott would really do, Mr. Hollander?”
Hollander tried painfully to concentrate. He felt the need of being very careful of his footing: they were on dangerous ground.
“Do?”
“Yes—when she told you during tea at the Ritz that she had about reached the end and was either going to kill Mr. Endicott or commit suicide. Or didn’t you really believe either?”
It seemed impossible that Hollander’s face could grow any paler.
“You’re crazy, Lieutenant.”
“All sorts of people tell me so lots of times, Mr. Hollander. Did you have to wear Endicott’s hat when you went out because you had lost your own?”
Hollander sighed fretfully. “You must think I’m awfully dumb,” he said.
“Oh, not at all—well, in a few things, yes. Your choice of friends, for example. And I don’t mean the Endicotts.”
“Whom do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“That dark-eyed child, for one—Mr. Smith. But perhaps you don’t know that his name is not Smith. I imagine that when you left him in the apartment he was still either Jack Perry or Larry Nevins. He shows great versatility, really, in his adoption of names. I was just a little surprised and disappointed at his present selection of Smith.”
“You’ve been to my apartment, Lieutenant?”
“Yes. I had quite an enlightening talk with the present Mr. Smith. Where did you leave Endicott’s hat?”
Hollander, after one peevish glare, shut his eyes. “I can tell you pretty well what happened, you see, except for that,” Lieutenant Valcour went on. “You did believe Mrs. Endicott this afternoon when she told you her intention. That much is fact. And now for a little fiction: either at the Ritz, or just as you were handing her into her car, you stole her purse.” Hollander’s eyes snapped open and glared viciously.
“Because,” Lieutenant Valcour continued, “you wanted her keys—the keys to this house. You were a little hazy as to just what it was you intended to do, but you did know that you were going to kill Endicott, and that you were going to do it before his wife either committed suicide or killed him herself. You went to your apartment and got the stiletto. Then you came back here, let yourself in with Mrs. Endicott’s keys, came up to this floor and into this room. You may have been in several of the other rooms first: I don’t know. Nor do I know just what you were searching for while you waited in here, either. Mrs. Endicott herself will tell me all about that later. At any rate, you were going through Endicott’s clothes in that cupboard when you heard him coming. You closed the cupboard door. You were naturally nervous and upset—everyone is when contemplating or committing a crime. You were afraid there would be some slip, so you disguised yourself with dust smeared on your face. Then, either because you made some noise or else because he wanted to get something Endicott opened the cupboard door and saw you. You must have had the stiletto all ready in your hand and have looked pretty horrible altogether, because the shock of seeing you stopped his heart and he crumpled to the floor.”
Hollander’s eyes began to look feverish.
“His falling like that startled you,” went on Lieutenant Valcour. “You felt his heart, and in pulling open his overcoat so that you could get your hand inside you ripped off the top button. What did you do with it?”
Hollander grinned faintly. “Swallowed it,” he said.
Lieutenant Valcour flushed a little. “You probably put it in your pocket. You were satisfied that Endicott was dead—miraculously dead—and that you hadn’t had to stab him. But he was dead, and you experienced the natural panic of all murderers. I don’t mean that you went wild, or anything. But your mind didn’t function correctly. You may have been quite calm, but it wasn’t a calmness based on intelligence. You dragged Endicott into the cupboard and closed the door. You washed the dirt from your hands and face in the bathroom, combed and brushed your hair, wiped the silver clean, and then printed that curious note which Mrs. Endicott found, and which contained no significance other than to direct suspicion to some outside agency in order to shield her from becoming a suspect herself. But why did you take Endicott’s hat, and where did you put it?”
“You’re talking bunk, Lieutenant.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Hollander, those were the moves which were made here tonight—whether you were the person who made them or not.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And it is quite within the range of possibility that if you didn’t make them, then Mrs. Endicott did.”
Hollander looked very worried, very tired. “You’re bluffing, Lieutenant,” he said.
“And you’re a very frightened man, Mr. Hollander.”
“Are you going to arrest Mrs. Endicott?”
“That depends.”
“Because she didn’t do it.”
“Why didn’t she, Mr. Hollander?”
“Because she loved her husband.”
“I wish you would explain to me how it is that she loved him so much that she wanted either to commit suicide or else kill him.”
“Pride, Lieutenant.”
Lieutenant Valcour tested the possibility of that angle. It could not, he felt, be ignored. As many outrages were yearly committed under the goadings of pride as there were committed because of jealousy and hate.
“You believe, Mr. Hollander, that the other women whom her husband played around with hurt her pride so keenly that her love became colored with hate?”
“Why not?” A certain fierceness crept into Hollander’s voice. His eyes were shining very brightly. “People don’t know her as I know her. Nobody knows her the way I know her.”
Lieutenant Valcour shrugged. “She made you hate your friend—a man you’d been through the war with—whose life you had saved.”
“That’s the bunk, Lieutenant.”
“But you did, didn’t you?”
“Oh, sure, it’s all true enough, about it happening—but that stuff doesn’t last.”
“Friendship?”
“Among men? Hell, no.” Hollander jerked his head fretfully. “Gratitude gets damned tiresome, Lieutenant, not only to give it but to get it.”
“Especially,” Lieutenant Valcour said gently, “if a woman comes between.”
“No—no—no.”
There was a complete and very convincing finality in the three negations.
“But you do love Mrs. Endicott.”
“I worship her.”
“And she?”
“I don’t know.” There was nothing obscure in Hollander’s expression now, and his eyes were frankly, genuinely sincere. “Why should she? I’m nothing. Herbert was everything.”
Lieutenant Valcour almost regretted having to do so when he said, “Then why, Mr. Hollander, does she address you in her notes as ‘Tom, darling’?”
Hollander didn’t answer for a minute. He considered the question quite seriously. “I guess it’s just because she’s sorry for me,” he said.
“And I, personally, think that that’s a pretty bum guess.”
“No—listen here, Lieutenant…”
Hollander’s voice began to wander. His sentences became broken—meaningless. It was with a sense of relief that Lieutenant Valcour
saw the door open and two stretcher carriers come in followed by Dr. Worth and the ambulance surgeon. Hollander, as they carried him out, was unconscious again.
Lieutenant Valcour detained Dr. Worth at the door.
“There is something I should like to ask you,” he said.
CHAPTER XIX
3:15 A.M.—The Properties of Horror
“Doctor,” Lieutenant Valcour said, “our immediate concern is to find out who fired that shot. The principal reason is quite academic: we want to catch and arrest the person who did it. A secondary reason is that many people who reach the state of mental unbalance where they are impelled to commit murder don’t stop with the crime. They’ve tasted blood. They are in a state of abnormal acuteness, and are driven by a new fear: that of discovery and capture. To prevent being captured, they reason, why not kill again? There is nothing to be lost. You see, they can only be electrocuted once. I am presupposing, of course, that the criminal is an outsider—some person at present hidden in the house, who will make some desperate effort at escape. It is a supposition that must be entertained, even though it is not a very good one. I believe that the facts will eventually prove the criminal to be a legitimate inmate.”
“That narrows the field, doesn’t it, Lieutenant, to whoever was in Mrs. Endicott’s room?”
“It does, unless somebody dropped a rope ladder from an upstairs window and got onto the balcony in that way. But I don’t put much stock in those tricks, Doctor, any more than I do in sliding panels and trapdoors. Outside of the badger game I’ve never come across a sliding panel in my life, and I don’t ever expect to, either.”
Dr. Worth was inclined to take the idea more seriously. “But a rope ladder—there might very well be one around the house for an emergency fire escape.”
“All right, who was in the room just above this one? You. Did you come down a rope ladder and shoot Endicott?”
“God’s truth—my dear man—”
“Oh, be sensible, Doctor, of course you didn’t. And who had the room across the hall from you, which also is above the balcony? Mrs. Siddons, the housekeeper. If you saw her, you’d scarcely picture her as hurrying up and down a rope ladder. No, Doctor, whoever was on that balcony came from Mrs. Endicott’s room. We’re back to the same three people: Mrs. Endicott, her maid, and her nurse.”
“But Mrs. Endicott is out of the question, Lieutenant. She is still under the influence of the narcotic I gave her.”
“How about the nurse, Doctor? Have you known her long?”
“Known her? Only for the several cases she has worked on with me. But she comes from the most reputable agency in the city. How about the maid?”
“I don’t know.”
“She is just as good a candidate for suspicion as Miss Vickers, isn’t she? Why under the sun should Miss Vickers want to shoot Endicott?”
“I’m not seriously considering Miss Vickers at all. It’s perfectly obvious that whoever did shoot Endicott was either directly responsible for the earlier attack during the evening or else involved in it as an accomplice.”
“That might still include the maid.”
“It certainly might. I wonder if you’d mind asking Miss Vickers to come in here. I’d like to question her first.”
Dr. Worth nodded toward Endicott’s body, covered with a sheet on the bed. “Miss Vickers, Lieutenant, being a nurse is naturally accustomed to seeing the dead, but it will be rather gruesome for the maid if you question her in here, too.”
“Very gruesome, Doctor.”
“Well, you know best. You’re liable to have a fine case of hysterics on your hands.”
“I’ll risk it.”
Dr. Worth left and closed the door. There again swept over Lieutenant Valcour, with the solitude, that indefinable feeling of some lurking dread. There were voices crying out to him from the subconscious, warning him of dangers that were very real, very close at hand—but the messages were indecisive, as are all instinctive things which fall beyond the charted seas of any human knowledge.
Nurse Vickers came in without the formality of knocking. Her glance toward the bed was professional and not colored by any sign of nervousness.
“Thank you for coming, Miss Vickers. I’ll only bother you for a minute.”
“No bother at all, Lieutenant.”
“There is just one thing I want to know: who was in the room with you and your patient at the time of the shooting?”
“Why, I couldn’t say, Lieutenant, exactly.”
“Why not, Miss Vickers?”
“Because I wasn’t there myself. I was down in the kitchen making some coffee. I left Roberts with Mrs. Endicott. You see, there wasn’t anything that had to be done except just to be there. I’m sure it was quite all right.”
“Of course it was. I’m not suggesting for a minute, Miss Vickers, that I thought otherwise.” Lieutenant Valcour studied the woman for a second and then said, “I just wanted to know if you could help me check up on the number of shots that were fired.”
“I didn’t hear any shots at all, Lieutenant, ’way down there in that kitchen.”
Lieutenant Valcour wondered at this. The sound of one shot might well have been heard down in the kitchen: the shot which had killed Endicott and which had been fired from the balcony. The sound would surely have travelled clearly in the still night air and to the kitchen from outside. And yet he believed Nurse Vickers implicitly in her statement that she had heard no shot. There was no earthly reason why she should lie about it. The fact convinced him that whoever had fired had held the pistol inside of the window. He glanced at the sash and realized that the opening afforded plenty of room for a hand holding a gun to reach through.
“No,” he said, “I suppose you couldn’t have heard anything at all. Maybe Roberts can help me. She was in the room, wasn’t she, when you came back?”
“Oh, yes, Lieutenant, and terribly excited about the shooting. She seemed so upset, in fact, that if there hadn’t been so many much more important things for Dr. Worth to attend to, I’d have asked him to give her something to quiet her.”
“One can hardly blame Roberts,” Lieutenant Valcour said. “The fusillade must have been quite a shock, you know. And then everyone’s nerves are on edge tonight anyway. In just what fashion was she upset, Miss Vickers? From your professional experience, I mean, you probably could diagnose her actions. Was it fright—nervous shock?”
“Oh, fright, of course, Lieutenant. I’ve seen lots of nervous and hysterical people during my work but never one as badly off as she was. I’m not exaggerating one bit when I say that she was gripped with an hysterical sort of terror.”
“Really. As bad as that?”
“Why, I was almost afraid even to let her stay in the room with the patient. The poor creature actually seemed to blame Mrs. Endicott in some fashion for what had happened. Just imagine this, Lieutenant: when I came in she was literally leaning over the bed and shaking her fist at Mrs. Endicott.”
“You are quite certain of this, Miss Vickers?”
“I saw it with my own eyes, Lieutenant.”
“And was Roberts saying anything?”
“Just the jumble that people go in for when they’re hysterical.”
“You couldn’t catch anything connected?”
“I didn’t try, Lieutenant. I had to get her away from the bed and calm her down.”
“You were able to?”
“I was. She calmed down quite suddenly and became perfectly normal again. I persuaded her to run downstairs and make herself a good bracing cup of tea.”
“Possibly carrying the pistol with her,” Lieutenant Valcour thought bitterly, “to hide it in some place where it might never be found.”
“Did she come back into the room afterward?” he said.
“Well, not really, Lieutenant. I know how particular you police officers are about the littlest details. She just stopped at the door to tell me she was feeling all right again. She said she was going upstairs to her room to
take a little rest.”
“And you’re quite sure, Miss Vickers, that you can’t recall any of the words that Roberts was saying when you found her leaning over the bed?”
“I would if I could, Lieutenant. It was just a jumble. Ice—something about ‘ice and human hearts.’ Then she switched to ‘searing flames’ and I don’t know what all else.”
“Would it bother you very much to go up to her room and see whether she’s in condition to come down here for a few minutes?”
“Why, not at all. I’d be glad to.”
“Thank you, Miss Vickers. You’ve helped me tremendously. Oh, there’s just one thing, Miss Vickers.”
Miss Vickers paused at the doorway.
“Yes, Lieutenant?”
“When you came back upstairs from the kitchen, did you notice anything about the atmosphere of Mrs. Endicott’s room?”
“Why—I don’t know—you mean a sense of tension or something?”
“No, I don’t. I mean was it as warm as when you left it, or cooler, or what?”
“Yes, I do, too—it was cooler—much. Because I remember after I quieted Roberts I went over to one of the radiators to see if the heat was still turned on. I thought Roberts must have turned it off, although I couldn’t for the life of me see why. But the radiator was quite hot, so I realized it must have been just the change from the kitchen. It’s a hot kitchen.”
“That is probably just what it was. Would you send Roberts to me now, please?”
“I will, Lieutenant.”
“Thank you.”
Miss Vickers went out and closed the door.
Lieutenant Valcour then did a rather horrible thing. He went over to the bed and pulled down enough of the sheet so that Endicott’s face was exposed.
And then he sat down and waited for Roberts.
CHAPTER XX
3:24 A.M.—On Private Heights
“You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?”
She had been under a strain, and a rather terrible one. There wasn’t any doubt about that. It was emotion, after all, that brought age, not years, thought Lieutenant Valcour as he glanced at the dark rings so clearly visible beneath her tragic eyes.
